Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones provide the ability to conference multiple parties together. Low end video conferencing devices have numerous limitations including the number of devices that they can connect with and the number of simultaneous coders-decoders (“codecs”) they support. To overcome these challenges, businesses have opted to purchase larger capacity conferencing systems that have additional ports on them.
Alternatively, conference devices have been chained together to incorporate a number of users. For example, a first set of users would call into a conference operated by a first user. A second set of users would then call into a conference operated by a second user. To connect them together, the second user would dial into the conference operated by the first user. Effectively, the conference managed by the first user and the conference managed by the second user are interconnected to each other to create a combined conference.
Some systems do not have sufficient resources to support multiple codecs. To overcome these processing limitations, the first party into the conference often negotiates the codec that will then become the only supported codec for additional users. By locking the conference to a single codec, significant resources are saved.
With rapid advancements in mobility and the plethora of communication devices, however, forcing the use of a single codec within the communication network is becoming impossible. The network and all devices which access it have to be under the full control of the IT domain. Enterprise concepts such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), open networks, and a massive surge in third party applications make it difficult for IT groups to force restrictions onto groups of users.
A need therefore exists for a system for distributing video conference resources among connected parties and methods thereof that overcome those issues described above. These, as well as other related advantages, will be described in the present disclosure.